


Satan's Asshole, Arizona

by asuralucier



Category: UnREAL (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Clothes Sharing, Codependency, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Manipulation, F/F, No Boundaries - Freeform, Past Quinn/Chet, Roadtrips, Second Chances, Terrible Opinions a la Canon, Unhealthy Relationships, Vodka and Gin, bad language, exes getting back together, ignores S4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:15:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21939559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/pseuds/asuralucier
Summary: Rachel is a depressed hermit in the woods; Quinn has her own problems, but fixing Rachel’s has always been a surefire way to forget that she has any.(Assumes S3 as the series finale.)
Relationships: Rachel Goldberg/Quinn King
Comments: 11
Kudos: 40
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Satan's Asshole, Arizona

**Author's Note:**

  * For [definefreedom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/definefreedom/gifts).



> Thanks to my beta for a last minute job!

_You’ve reached Rachel Goldberg. I’m not able to come to the phone right now. Leave a message and I might call you back. Thanks._

“Goldberg,” Quinn said into her cordless earpiece as she drove; it was a long winding road, one lane each side. Quinn got the feeling, an odd sinking “you’re going to be fucking-goddamn dead” kind of feeling. If she veered one inch to the left, it was headfirst into an edge of a cliff face. One inch to the right, it was into the opposite lane, and then off the same cliff’s face, provided she didn’t run into an eighteen-wheeler with some fatass bozo asleep at the wheel.

“It’s me. Again. Fucking return my calls. I know you don’t have a job.”

Which, Quinn had to admit, was ironic, because saying that out loud reminded her in the way that Quinn definitely didn’t need right at this moment, that she didn’t have a job either. Gainfully unemployed, or some bullshit.

Quinn cut the call and floored the gas. Oregon (not Rachel, no, definitely not) was still hours away on this lonely stretch of road, and Quinn was a woman with no time on her hands. No time to think about the bad decisions she was either directly or indirectly responsible for. Quinn made a lot of decisions, and thanks to a steady drip of only the best vodka, she forgot about most of them.

But now there was time, boundless reams of it, like discarded drafts on the cutting room floor. Worse, there was no vodka.

At Brookings, Oregon, a sleepy border town full of old people taking a million years to cross the street with their walkers and motor scooters, Quinn thought about turning back to L.A. (She learned too, that motor scooters didn’t actually move fast and could break down at any moment. Fuck you for being in the middle of the crosswalk.)

She stopped for an early dinner, at a bistro. Walking in, Quinn almost felt like Miss America. For all she detested of those dime-a-dozen anorexic Barbies crawling around in Beverly Hills, she thought she could see the appeal, finally. She didn’t like it, but there was a definite appeal.

“Where are you headed, honey?”

The menu was in large print, obviously catering to its best customers. The waitress who gave her the run-down of the day’s specials looked either forty or sixty. Quinn used to be able to tell these things.

The farther Quinn got from L.A., the more normal she felt. Normal was not exactly a great feeling. It made her want a vodka on the rocks.

“What makes you think I’m headed somewhere?” Quinn asked.

“Because you’re not here for the kite festival,” the waitress said, laughing at her own joke. She’d raised her voice when she spoke, as if to bring nearby tables, no doubt seating regulars who had nothing better to do, in on a joke that really wasn’t funny.

Somehow, it didn’t surprise Quinn in the least that Brookings played host to a fucking kite festival. She got out a post-it from her purse. It had Rachel’s new address scrawled on it with a pen that had just about run out of ink -- or not new, Rachel had been there for months. More like, Quinn was just noticing her absence more keenly now, like she’d picked a scab off of a long-healing wound.

“Here,” Quinn said. “I think it’s near somewhere called Joseph. My friend moved there for the.” She cut herself off before she accidentally told the truth. “Scenery.”

“Joseph is years away,” said someone else at the next table. “I’d get a move on, if I were you.”

Quinn spent the night in Portland and nearly stayed. She drove past apartments for sale and then drove out of the city.

She rang Rachel’s cell again, got her voicemail (again), left another message.

“I’m coming to see you. It’s what you get for not calling me back.”

Joseph, Oregon, had a population of about a thousand people and at least half of those people must be imaginary. She stopped for coffee at a shop and asked after Rachel’s address. The barista pointed in a general non-direction out the window and said it wasn’t far. Half an hour by car.

Finally, Quinn found the place, a lone cabin with a dirt path leading to it. Somehow, the cabin looked even sadder in person. She thought about trying Rachel on the phone again, gave up on the idea, and went and knocked.

Rachel’s car was there, so Quinn knew she had to be home. Unless, in some classic Goldberg maneuver, she was passed out in the woods somewhere. It wouldn’t be a complete surprise to Quinn (or, no it wouldn’t be a surprise whatsoever).

“ -- Quinn? The fuck are you doing here?”

Quinn turned, and took in Rachel Goldberg at the height of her prop-truck dwelling days. You know, the days when she’d just literally roll out of bed and into the heat of the Everlasting workplace. Pure chaos, their element. The fact that Rachel smelled like she’d been masturbating for hours on end, never seem to trip anyone up, least of all Quinn.

But now it was different. The flannel that hung off Rachel’s skinny shoulders looked wrinkled, like she’d been wearing the same thing for about four days without showering. Wordlessly, Quinn stepped out of the way of Rachel’s front door and watched her unlock it.

Rachel was a city girl too. Locking your door when you lived in the middle of fucking nowhere like you were afraid you were going to get robbed. That wasn’t something that nobody could shake off by deciding to be a hermit in the middle of fuck-you nowhere for a couple of months.

Quinn considered her answer. She’d had ample time, after all, nearly twenty-four hours if she counted the night she’d spent in Portland. Still, nothing came to mind and she didn’t want to default to something as nondescript as, I was worried about you. You weren’t picking up your phone. I kind of blew up my life a little.

So instead, Quinn followed Rachel into the cabin when the door didn’t directly slam in her face. Not that she seriously thought it would. “Who’s going to rob you out here?”

“There’s like fuck all to do in Joseph,” said Rachel. “Reenacting robberies is a thing they actually do here. I mean, it’s just the bank in town for now, but.”

Quinn said, “Right.”

The cabin was not big. The living room was barely big enough to fit in a loveseat, a tattered old arm chair, and a coffee table that’d hopefully seen better days. At least Rachel had a TV.

“TV’s broken.” Rachel saw her looking at it.

“Then why’s it still here?”

“There’s some guy that’s supposed to come out and pick it up.” Rachel shrugged. “But he’s like, busy.”

“I thought you said there was nothing to do in Joseph,” said Quinn. She went over to the loveseat and sank down on it. Immediately, her back protested, no doubt from a combination of driving so long, and the fact that the cushions on Rachel’s loveseat left much to be desired. Quinn shuddered to think how she’d even come by this terrible piece of furniture. Maybe she found it on the side of the street, or something.

“I said there wasn’t anything for me to do in Joseph,” Rachel corrected her. She picked at a loose thread at the edge of her flannel and shifted from foot to foot. “Want something to drink?”

“Fuck yes,” said Quinn. “Thought you’d never ask.”

“You can’t get benzos or cough syrup so easily here,” Rachel said, as if the ease of how a person obtained illicit pharmaceutical drugs for personal use was always going to be a deciding factor in how she purchased real estate. “So now I drink.”

Rachel’s kitchen was tiny and led into a box of a laundry room where Quinn could (thankfully) spy a washing machine. She rooted around in Rachel’s cabinets, mostly empty, until she found some glasses.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Quinn said, plucking a bottle of quarter-full brand vodka from the inside of Rachel’s working fridge and filled her own glass up to the brim.

“Don’t want vodka,” said Rachel. “Gin.”

Well, this was new. Quinn once prided herself on knowing all of Rachel’s vices so she could dole them out. “Gin, look at you.”

But if Rachel wanted gin, Rachel could have gin. There were at least three bottles of gin to choose from, and when Quinn and Rachel both reached for the same one, Quinn got a whiff of Rachel and stepped away.

“I mean, really, look at you, Rachel. Jesus.”

“You don’t like it, leave,” Rachel said. She didn’t bother with a glass.

Quinn had liked it when they said goodbye.

Scratch that, cut. Rewind, take three hundred and fucking eighty-three. Saying good-bye to Rachel, sending her off with a check to buy her dream home, even if this dream was only several months old and seemed to Quinn completely half-baked, it’d seemed the right thing to do.

She wasn’t a selfish bitch anymore, and maybe some part of her was still determined to believe that. Quinn was here for Rachel, of course. Poor, jobless Rachel who had in a sense, exploded, but not in a good way.

And Quinn hadn’t meant to say any of those things to Rachel to placate her, to convince her that they did have a good run. Because they did. It was a hell of a run.

Ever since she could remember, Quinn had been adept at cajoling a version of truth out of people for the sake of good TV. She got so good at it that maybe she no longer really recognized the truth as it was.

Quinn sat on Rachel’s shit loveseat in her only pair of clean underwear and one of Rachel’s t-shirts. _This is What a Feminist Looks Like_. The t-shirt barely reached the start of her thighs.

The washing machine in the back laundry room chugged on, shaking the old floorboards in Rachel’s kitchen. It was the third time that Quinn had attempted to do her laundry, and Rachel’s response to Quinn’s increased irritation was to say that sometimes the dirty water spit back out (or something) but sometimes if you ran a wash a couple of times, the machine would eventually get the memo and work.

“Isn’t _Everlasting_ filming right now?” said Rachel, lounging nearby, stretched out sideways on her armchair. Her hair was a wild dark mane down past shoulders and Quinn’s fingers suddenly itched to wind themselves in the strands, tangles and all. “Who the fuck did you even leave in charge?”

Quinn told the truth. “I don’t know.”

Her admission seemed to get Rachel’s attention somewhat. Rachel sat up, forcefully enough so that some gin sloshed out of the bottle she was cradling. She frowned, touching her fingers against the stain left on her shirt, near the slope of her breasts. (She wasn't wearing a bra.) Then Quinn watched as Rachel licked her fingers.

“Even I don’t do that,” said Quinn.

Rachel tipped back a mouthful of gin and swallowed noisily. Then she plonked the bottle on the floor, a muted thud on the threadbare carpet. “You’re gonna have to start not avoiding my questions eventually, Quinn.”

“I’m not avoiding shit, Rachel, okay.” Quinn didn’t look at her. “And if you really wanted to know you could have made me tell you.”

“Like I can make you do that,” Rachel laughed, not very nicely. “I keep doing all this pretty fucked up terrible shit for you, Quinn. And all I got in the end was a good-bye! You’re going to explode! Have this check, have a nice life. Fuck you!”

The laundry machine punctuated all this with an especially angry whirring noise.

Then it went quiet.

Quinn considered an answer and decided she didn’t have one. That’d always been one of her favorite things about Rachel. The way the other woman could always shock her into silence. On set, it was a wonderful asset, like watching an actual magician perform actual fucking magic.

On her own, the full force of Rachel’s anger and the way she twisted the world in her wake, was almost too much for Quinn to bear.

Quinn got up from the loveseat and went to check on her laundry. The contents of the washing machine sat still soaked in gray, soapy water.

“Fuck.”

Rachel’s bedroom was a Freudian treasure trove of some top grade psychological bullshit. Quinn never liked psychology. Psychology tended to dictate that people could be understood once you slapped a label on them, like nice and neat pill bottles.

The bedroom had very little by the way of decoration, but it had one framed photo of Rachel and Asa Goldberg grinning cheek to cheek. In the photo, Rachel looked about thirteen. Quinn prided herself in knowing nearly everything about Rachel’s life, and yet, she’d never seen this particular photograph before.

Quinn stepped up closer next to it and dragged her thumb across the glass, fully expecting to come away with dust, but the glass was clean.

“Where’s this?”

“Dad and I used to do these trips,” Rachel said. “It was a private fishing lake belonging to one of Mom’s clients, and she absolutely hated it. It pissed her off so much when we would go. Which means we didn’t go often, but we did sometimes. You know?”

Quinn turned her attention away from the photo and towards Rachel’s bed, a single mattress on the bottom bunk of a two-tier bed. Maybe it reminded her of sleeping in the truck. She was curled up there, as if she wanted to go away, as if she wanted Quinn to go away, but Quinn knew she’d never say.

“I know, I think.” Quinn sat down on the bed. “What the hell’s happened to you, Goldberg? I thought we left it in a good place.”

“We left _you_ in a good place, Quinn.” Rachel turned to look at her. There was a wisp of hair covering her eyes and Quinn brushed it aside and tucked it behind Rachel’s ear. Rachel could have flinched away, but she stayed still. “We left you in a good place. You got to say that you weren’t a selfish bitch and believe it, and Chet confessed to you on national TV. You got to live your life full of money, dick, power like we fucking said.”

Quinn drew in a deep breath. “I could have told you not to move to Satan’s Asshole, middle of rotten ass nowhere.”

“I think that’s Arizona,” said Rachel, and even though it made almost no sense, it made both of them laugh.

Then Rachel reached up to kiss her, and Quinn wanted to tell her to brush her teeth. And take a shower, and a million other things. But she let her hands do the talking, sliding carefully under Rachel’s loose cotton pants to find that she wasn’t wearing panties.

“So like, my washing machine doesn’t really work,” said Rachel, surging up again to lick Quinn’s teeth like she was chasing a line of coke. “I might have mentioned.”

“Yeah,” Quinn said, splaying her fingers very carefully over Rachel’s warm skin, as if she was trying to gather up all of her, and then, Quinn tried to remember. “You might have.”

They still weren’t really on speaking terms, but fucking was making up for a lot of that. It felt normal, almost. They even did it once or twice in the laundry room because the damn space had to be good for something.

Once they’d gotten the washing machine to work, Rachel suggested that they drive into Joseph to eat at the only restaurant worth eating in. When they got there, Quinn found that it wasn’t even really a restaurant. It was a drive-through that specialized in farm-to-table burgers.

Rachel bit enthusiastically into her burger, then she took her time sucking some sort of mayo-sauce that got all over her fingers.

“Good though, right?”

“Surprisingly,” said Quinn. “It’s going to take more than a damn good burger to alleviate this place from being Satan’s Asshole.”

“Will you let that go already?”

“I don’t let anything go,” Quinn reminded her. “A head bitch in charge is nothing in showbiz without her grudges.”

Rachel said, “Are you still in showbiz? This place is murder on people in showbiz. Did you know they tried to film a movie here once, one with Angelina Jolie or something but reception kept cutting out so they eventually gave up and moved production somewhere else.”

Quinn chewed thoughtfully on a fry.

“You drove out here too, right? When you first came up.”

“Yeah,” Rachel nodded. “It took a long time. I drove through Portland. Slept in the car.”

“You would.”

“I really liked driving out of Los Angeles.” They had bought a six-pack of cheap beer and Rachel reached in to grab two. She opened one can, sipped it, and handed it over to Quinn, who stared at it suspiciously, not because of Rachel’s spit around the rim, but because of the fact that it was off-brand beer. She hadn’t drank shit like that since college. “Now, there’s an asshole.”

“Speaking of assholes,” said Quinn. “I left Chet. And the show. But mostly Chet.”

“Did you do it on live TV?” Rachel asked without missing a beat. Quinn could see the lively producer’s glint coming into Rachel’s eyes again, making her another person entirely. She was like a lithe big cat on the hunt, looking for her next angle.

“No,” Quinn admitted. “Thought about it. But I did do it in front of the whole crew, after the cameras stopped rolling. I don’t hate him.”

“You better not,” said Rachel. “You always thought he was the better bet, than me. I know he had a dick, Quinn, but his dick didn’t have to take over all of him, if you get me.” She clicked her tongue knowingly. “Is that why you’re here, Quinn? Because I’m second best? Because you need your dragon?”

Quinn swished the tasteless, watery beer around her mouth, as if she was trying to chase the remnants of Rachel on her tongue. Or, she wasn't trying to. She was.

"No, because this was the only place I knew I could be. If you don’t mind.”

Rachel plucked the can carefully out of Quinn’s grip and took a swig of beer. “Guess I don’t.”


End file.
